TW, I saw some of your posts and other peoples for that matter re: tickets. If I were you I would be very wary of buying any sort of ticket! I've done a lot of research and if I were you I would wait until after the first match of England or Australia to see exactly what the security arrangements are going to be for entering the stadiums! Do a google search for world cup tickets and RFID (this is the microchip that is implanted into the ticket) and you will see how stringent arrangments are. I've got a TST for all the games and I've told all my mates to wait until after the first England match before they pay 200-500 quid for tickets. Hopefully, it will be scaremongering which is normally the case for big competitions but I've got a feeling that this time it's going to be different with all the paranoia regarding the war on terrorism and all the rest of it.

Have a look at the tickets forum, a guy I think is called Bezza has just posted an article from www.bbc.co.uk regarding online tickets for WC2006! I bought all of my tickets for France and Portugal and loads of other matches off touts but they did not have RFID, it's only been commercially viable in the last year or so. Check it out for yourself and do some research. There will be 2 ticket checks in Germany, the first perimeter will be a simple ticket check just to confirm that you have tickets and the second check is where it gets difficult. FIFA and the German authorities are aiming to check 50-60% of punters to make sure their photo ID corresponds to the info on the ticket. In addition, if you buy a stolen ticket (which is quite common) all the original owner has to do is log on to FIFA's website and cancell the ticket electronically. When the punter with the stolen ticket approaches the turnstile (within 15 feet) the steward will see a warning to say that the ticket has been flagged and the punter will be refused entry. Like I say if you don't believe me check it out for yourselves, all the info is on the net. When I was in New York recently I was in a hostel with 2 Hamburg fans and they were telling me that the German authorities are scared shitless of English, German, Dutch and Polish fans going bezerk and are paranoid about Al Qaida and all the ' Mohammed cartoon' bollocks. Therefore, security is of paramount importance! Who knows it may all turn out to be nonsense like previous tournaments but my mates are waiting until after me and a couple of others have been to the Paraguay match to check everything out!

Right, so thats only 40,000 ticket holders to check in 20 minutes, thats 200 ticket holders every minute that need to be verified for ID purposes before they are allowed in. I'll put money on the fact that this doesn't happen.

Well, first of all nobody has mentioned 40,000 fans. If you could actually read I wrote 50-60% of fans. Which considering the capacities of the stadiums is around 20-30,000. But then again it's still a lot of people to get through, hopefully it is all bollocks because the last thing I want to do when I'm out on the lash is carry my passport around!